


A Matter of Translation

by Mithrigil



Category: Suikoden V
Genre: F/F, Ideological Seduction, Lima Syndrome, Missus Clause Challenge, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:05:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A strategist never apologizes, and certainly not for seducing her adjutant to the cause.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Translation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EnohIO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnohIO/gifts).



It is little more than a grey cell at first, larger than the rest of the cells in Agate Prison by merely twelve square stones. One window, cut into the stone and framed with smooth metal bars of new iron, black and free of rust, looks southward over the Feitas River and the worn cliffs at either side. One door, barred just the same, and open for now. One bed, elevated high enough to store a traveling trunk beneath, takes up nearly its entire side of the cell, and one chair and one desk dominate the wall beside it. The room’s inhabitant has brought a rug with her--a rug, of all things--and it is too large to unfurl without lifting the bed.

“Be a dear, won’t you,” Lady Merces asks, peering through the bars on the door to Lelei, “and help me move in?”

It is a silent task. There’s nothing in the rules against it. There are guards enough on this hall that Lelei could call them over, stand aside from her post and hold up the bed for this tiny, pitiable foreigner so she can make the floor of her prison a little less cold.

Said tiny, pitiable foreigner is the witch that sold out Lord Marscal Godwin.

Lelei says nothing, moves nowhere.

***

“She should be dead,” Cius says in the breakroom, rubbing his hands around a cup of tea.

Lelei sets her chopsticks down on her tray, one gentle click after another. “Her Majesty handed down the sentence. We have no right to pronounce otherwise.”

“She’ll show mercy to this traitor but pronounce death to all of Lordlake?” Cius lowers his voice, leans nearer to Lelei over his hands and the gently steaming teacup. “I’m not pronouncing anything, Lelei. But her Majesty spared my life once. She used to care for her people. And now she fosters traitors, foreigners.”

“She spared you in honor,” Lelei reminds him. “She’s sparing Lady Merces in disgrace. Maybe her people would think death is the truer honor. Maybe Her Majesty wants to turn Lady Merces against the Northerners. We don’t know. We _can’t_ know. So we shouldn’t presume.”

Cius shakes his head. “But what she did to Lord Godwin--”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lelei says. “She’s here by the Queen’s command.”

“She’s despicable,” Cius says, around a slow sip of tea.

“I assume you don’t mean Her Majesty.”

Cius has the presence of mind to look flustered and apologetic, so Lelei doesn’t press the issue.

***

The rug is unfurled now, but creased against the far wall in a peak since Lady Merces still can’t lift the bed off the floor on her own. Lelei glances at the floor only once, then does what she came to do and places Lady Merces’s breakfast on the desk.

Lady Merces smiles, tells her “Thank you.” It’s a strange smile; not unnatural, but flat and bright like a painted mask or a child’s drawing. Lelei doesn’t return it and turns away.

“Wait,” Lady Merces says as she sits at the table. “Would you mind staying with me while I eat? I know you’re not meant to talk to me, but you can keep just as good an eye on me from in here as out there, can’t you?” She picks up the chopsticks, arranges them in her fingers with a kind of scripted elegance. “Please. Sit.”

Lelei doesn’t sit, but she does stay by the door and watch. Lady Merces has a point, after all: this way, Lelei will know when Lady Merces is done eating, will only have to open the door once more to leave, will have every assurance that there’s no foul play afoot. Or so she justifies it to herself.

It still seems wrong, however logical. But Lady Merces smiles at Lelei again, porcelain or dark plaster, and says “I’m so glad,” and Lelei realizes that through all her deliberation she couldn’t will herself to move. “It’s dreadful already, this loneliness,” Lady Merces goes on, working the chopsticks into her rice and the rice to her lips, an incongruously large and inelegant mouthful for such a dainty gesture. Lelei can’t help wondering at it, but shuts her mouth before she can comment.

 _Don’t talk to the prisoners,_ she tells herself, lets it simmer in the knot between her eyes. _Not this one or any other._

Lady Merces eats slowly, shapes her mouth deliberately, like a predator bird. The white rice stands out against her dark skin, her pink tongue. Aside from her fair hair she doesn’t look like any Harmonian Lelei’s ever seen or heard of, and her clothes, if brightly-patterned, are more traditionally Falenan than anything else. _The witch that sold out Lord Godwin,_ Lelei reminds herself. _Like the witches in stories, who steal the eyes and clothes and souls of the ones they love, and damn the rest._

“What I wouldn’t give for a piece of bread.” Lady Merces sighs and sets her chopsticks down, and Lelei understands. She remembers the silver utensils that Lord Godwin would set out at banquets that Lelei’s mother had to clean up after, like fishing tridents but small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Lady Merces is not native to chopsticks, or chopsticks are not native to her. With an almost challenging little laugh, Lady Merces pinches a coin-sized lump of rice between her fingers, and places it in her mouth, licking the vinegar off with her tongue like a cat at a saucer.

A hot flush spreads over Lelei’s cheeks, too sudden to mask.

And it persists too long for Lady Merces to miss, evidently, if the way she smiles and raises her brow is any indication. Lelei shuts her eyes, just long enough to show disapproval without saying a word--she hopes, at any rate.

Lady Merces asks Lelei her name.

***

“At ease,” Lord Godwin commands, and Lelei relaxes as much as she’s allowed.

The prison offices don’t suit Lord Godwin as much as the Lord’s Box in Stormfist, where Lelei has seen him most often. Lelei remembers him from years ago, presiding over the gladiatorial matches with the simplest, sparest gestures, like sword strikes unto themselves. He seems no older, but for the new sheen of his hairless scalp.

“Do you understand the circumstances behind Lady Merces’s arrest, and her tenure at this prison?”

“As much as any of the other guards,” Lelei answers. “It’s clear that she betrayed her Majesty, and like most people I know I assume that it has to do with the Lordlake uprising. I don’t believe that Lady Merces incited the riot, because then she’d be dead with Lord Rovere, but because of Lady Merces’ history with you, I thought it might have to do with false counsel, and her coming under scrutiny for her betrayal of you and your family several weeks ago.”

There is very little as reassuring to Lelei as the proud, approving smile of a commanding officer. “You’re almost too smart for this job, Lelei.”

“Sir.”

“She has, indeed, provided false counsel,” Lord Godwin says, hands unfurled at his sides, one at the hilt of his sword. “And you know what they say: fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me. She has turned her talons against the Queen, and for that, we’ve caged her.”

Lelei nods. “Permission to speak freely, sir.”

“Granted.”

“There has been some concern expressed among those of my rank as to why we’re imprisoning Lady Merces at all.”

“We’ve expressed the same concern, from the lowest kern to the highest lord.” Lelei wonders if, long ago, Lord Godwin would have instilled those words with humor. He doesn’t now. “She is here by royal decree, and we must abide by it.”

“Sir.”

“You have already acquainted yourself with her habits.” He does not ask, so Lelei does not tell him _yes, sir._ “Have you found anything amiss?”

“She’s very talkative, sir,” Lelei says.

That, Lord Godwin saw the humor in, but it’s bitter, startled, low. “She is. And you’ve resisted her so far?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep it up,” he says. “You’re one of the few female guards in this prison, and clearly among the wiliest. I’m placing you in charge of her section.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But be careful. That woman could talk the water out of the river whether it has ears to listen or not, and then where would we be?”

Lelei knows she oughtn’t laugh, not even out of nerves. “I’ll do it, sir,” she says, not _I’ll do my best_ , not _I’ll try._ Lord Godwin expects no less.

***

Boxes upon boxes arrive at the postmaster’s the following afternoon. The addressee, in Falenan ideographs, reads “Former Royal Tactician Lucretia Merces,” and her name is written with the characters for _longing, open, summer, clear, arrow_. Lelei assumes the non-ideographic language underneath reads the same. It’s an elegant lettering, with long sweeping strokes and whorls, all leaning right-to-left like trees in a strong wind. Lelei memorizes the pattern on the box, the foreign letters merging into a picture like an unconformity between layers of rock on a cliffside, or the mark of dried salt staining a leather shoe. The couriers load them into Lady Merces’s cell two at a time until they’re piled higher, than she is tall, longer than the bed is wide, a prison within a prison and a cancer that consumes a full third of the meager space.

The entire time, Lady Merces sits by he barred window, hands folded nearly in her lap, and Lelei watches. The smile on Lady Merces’s lips is indomitable in its placidity, like polished brass.

She won’t run. She wouldn’t run. All her things are here.

When the last box is in, Lelei moves to shut the door, and Lady Merces raises one hand from her lap to stall her.

“Forgive me,” she says, “but I’m not allowed to have anything sharp enough in here to cut the box-strings. Would you mind?”

It’s another silent task, another painless, blameless favor. Lelei shuts her eyes a moment to steel herself to let it go, and the pattern of the foreign script on the boxes burns into her eyelids instead.

She turns, and says nothing--but takes out her service knife and kneels to cut the strings.

“Thank you,” Lady Merces says, before Lelei has even slit the first lid free. She comes away from the window, smoothes down her robes. “I won’t ask you to help me unload everything. It was impolite of me, last time.” The smile hasn’t left her face, and Lelei holds tighter to the hilt of her knife.

She doesn’t say _you’re welcome,_ or _it’s fine,_ even if Lady Merces is more than welcome to the thanks she gives. Lelei cuts string after string, and then, because she might as well, she takes the highest boxes down from the tops of their stacks. Lady Merces is small. She can’t see into them, let alone get them down, and if Lelei isn’t going to help her with anything else, she may as well make it possible for Lady Merces to help herself.

“That’s so kind of you.” Lady Merces almost beams, rubbing her palms together before she lifts the lid of the nearest box. “You’re so tall and stately. It’s lovely.”

Even if Lelei knew what to say to that--which she doesn’t--she’d be speechless from the contents of the box. Lady Merces unpacks book after book, thick saffron tomes and frail gold-eared pamphlets and scrolls in lacquered cases, and Lelei fights to keep her jaw from dropping like a skeleton’s.

Lady Merces laughs. Clearly, Lelei didn’t fight hard enough.

***

“Books,” Cius repeats.

“Books!” Lelei says, which makes this the third time. “More books than I’ve seen in my life, in her cell, right now.”

Cius whistles through his teeth. “Is that allowed?”

“Lord Godwin must have signed off on it. But, Cius. _Books_.”

“Yes, you told me.” But he smiles.

Lelei sighs into her tea. “How can a traitor, a prisoner, be entitled to so much? She’s here in disgrace, but with all her robes and her rugs and her books.”

“It’s disgusting, I agree. Which is why I think Her Majesty should have had Lady Merces killed.” Cius’s voice shrinks, as if he’s talking more to the tea than to Lelei. “She could have burned Lady Merces instead of Lordlake. Then you’d have her books, and she’d have nothing.”

“I still wouldn’t have her books,” Lelei says. “I’d still be here, I think.”

***

“Do you read Harmonian?” Lady Merces asks, her, and of course Lelei says nothing. “I only ask because I--well. You showed some interest, the other day.”

Lelei is on the far side of a locked and barred door, in a hall of stone, and still close enough to hear the pages of Lady Merces’s book turn.

“It’s not a difficult language,” she goes on. “Not nearly as difficult as Falenan, though I imagine if you’re used to an ideographic language it may be difficult to acclimate to a phonemic one. It was for me, in reverse, but I at least had some experience with other ideographic languages before I learned Falenan, so that might have been a mitigating factor. The most difficult thing, for me at least, was the disparity between the written and spoken aspects of the language. Harmonian is straightforward: I won’t say that one says what one means, because that certainly isn’t true, but you don’t have tenses in written Falenan. I found it so harrowing at first to piece together whether someone was going, or had gone, or would go soon. But then, you don’t have cases either, and that must be a blessing. So I suppose it’s a salvo. You learn a million pictures, and we learn a million ways of undermining the spirit of the word.”

At this point, Lelei is certain that Lady Merces enjoys the sound of her own voice. Whatever magic is in it, she hasn’t bespelled herself into silence.

“At least, here, I have the leisure to set these languages side-by-side without the pretext of war,” she goes on, sighing as if the prospect of war is merely an unwelcome change in the weather. “War will come, whether I am here or there. It’s the way of the True Runes and those and those who bear them. But even if I am relegated to the sideline, the makers of war can’t prevent me from analyzing their movements, nor my words from reaching those who fight thereafter. Some of the greatest works of our history have been written in prison, after all.” She laughs. “I’m part of a grand tradition. Well, another one. We are all of us part of grander traditions than we see from our present plains, and from the future heights the field is all too clear. Oh, that sounds lovely in Falenan! A Grasslander said it first:” And then she repeats it in a language that sounds like flames licking at thatch in a high wind.

They aren’t magic words. They don’t make Lelei want to speak any more than she already does.

But she already does, and it’s the fault of words in her own native tongue.

***

Agate Prison is in the center of the country, where three branches of the Feitas delta convene and break. The river flows southerly, but information flows wherever it may, and Lelei reads every news bulletin she can get her hands, or rather her eyes, on. But news takes time, and reports come in slowly, backdated by days or even weeks at a time.

According to most accounts and common logic, the riot in Lordlake rushed north, against the current. Despite speculation that Raftfleet aided the rioters, all contemporary accounts and an official statement from Admiral Raja, confirmed in both Eastern Skies and a military dispatch from Hershville, claim that the protesters took Barows South Dam unaided. The bulletins make no mention of Lady Merces’s betrayal of Lord Godwin, but Lelei knows that’s when it happened from her debriefing, from the gossip of the other soldiers. It took them a week to reach the East Palace, whereupon the Queen took up the Sun Rune, and razed Lordlake. And then Lucretia Merces arrived at Agate, the witch that didn’t burn, the whisperer that unleashed the vengeance of the Queen.

It seems awfully convenient that there was a foreigner to blame.

Lelei sorts her thoughts, and can’t untangle the knot they make at the base of her brain. The when and the how and the who and the what are there, all plain and clear as air, but _Why_ comes up with no answer.

***

The boxes that brought Lady Merces’s books have been stacked along the far wall in an improvised bookcase. Some painted vases support the box lids to halve the boxes and accommodate the smallest books. A real bookshelf would take up less space, but at least this way Lelei can maneuver around the crates and the creased rug without tripping.

She sets Lady Merces’s breakfast tray down on the desk, the way she has every morning these last four weeks. She braces herself for another lengthy monologue from Lady Merces, on whatever subject compels her this morning.

But this time, Lady Merces merely nods her thanks, and sits at the table grappling with her chopsticks, and eats her rice and drinks her tea.

“That will be all,” she says when she’s done, and Lelei walks out into the hall, silent but for the shifting of feet on stone and the occasional breath of another bored guard.

***

“So you’ve finally broken her spirit,” Cius says.

Lelei dips her head to get a closer look at her plate, and doesn’t look back up. “I should be prouder than I am.”

***

Lelei has two books in the barracks. Both of them are gifts: her dictionary of ideographs, a congratulatory present from the washerwoman who taught her to read and write, years ago; and _Rules of Rune Warfare_ , left behind by a dead comrade and given to Lelei by consensus. Lelei’s read both, cover to cover, a hundred times at least, and borrowed what few other books have been brought into the prison and aren’t Lord Godwin’s or his son’s.

She stretches out on her bed with _Rune Warfare_ and recites the words in her head full seconds before she sees them on the page. There’s always something new, of course--she’s found, reading the same texts over and over, that no book is the same if the reader has changed.

She wonders how many times Lady Merces has read her hundreds of books. Some of them are well-loved, frayed at the corners and smeared on the spine like Lelei’s. Lady Merces’s fingerprints must be smaller and softer on the pages than Lelei’s and the soldier’s and the washerwoman’s. Maybe Lady Merces’s skin doesn’t sweat. All the people with skin that dark that Lelei knows are from harsher climates, like the storm-torn Island Nations and the deserts of New Armes. But Lady Merces doesn’t look like any of them.

 _Rune Warfare_ lies on Lelei’s threadbare pillow, open to a favored page. Her fingers drift over the paper, the ideographs dancing behind her eyes. Where _is_ Lady Merces from? North, plainly--but not the Island Nations, and not Harmonia. She mentions the Grasslands occasionally, but Lelei has no idea where they are, and if Lady Merces has a surname and a title she can’t be from a tribe or a simple people. Can she?

Lelei doesn’t read much that night, though the book remains open.

***

“Thank you,” Lady Merces says when Lelei sets the breakfast tray down the next morning. Her smile is pale and drawn, a crack in that heretofore flawless bronze.

Lelei murmurs or stutters or breathes, “You’re welcome.”

***

“You’ll forgive my father,” the Young Master says, as he makes the prison rounds in Lord Godwin’s place. “But I’m sure you understand that the Senate runs only on its own time.”

Lelei doesn’t, but it makes sense based on her experience with nobles who like nothing more than to talk, at length. The Young Master is the same, but it’s not Lelei’s place to point this out. In fact, it’s not Lelei’s place to say anything at all but follow with a brush and paper, so she doesn’t.

The Young Master goes from cell to cell, speaks briefly to the posted guard, and dictates a few notes to Lelei on the inhabitant’s condition. His voice is easy to follow, not as resonant as his father’s but twice as crisp and clear, as if he cares deeply that every word be minutely understood. Lelei has no trouble finding the characters to describe what the Young Master points out the way she does with Lord Godwin’s vaguer observations.

“And the best for last, I see,” the Young Master almost huffs as they approach Lady Merces’s cell. “You’re her personal guard, are you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How have you found her?”

The easiest answer, despite all the others welling up in Lelei’s throat, is still “Talkative, sir.”

The Young Master laughs, as mirthless as his father but even more surprising. But his laughter is joined by someone else’s more eminently recognizable laugh, from inside the cell, and they clash like spells on the air.

“Gizel,” Lady Merces almost sings, sarcasm thick in her tone. “You dear little prince, have you come to rescue me?”

The smirk that flares across the Young Master’s jaw chills Lelei to the bones in her fingertips. “Never.”

Lady Merces laughs: this time, the Young Master doesn’t. “And here I thought you too mature to gloat.”

The Young Master rolls his eyes, and tells Lelei, “Follow me in, and write none of this down.” What can Lelei do but hand off her paperwork to the nearest guard and obey?

Inside the cell, Lady Merces is once again sitting by the window. This time, a scroll is half-unfurled across the lap of her robes, and half-blank. She must have been composing instead of reading. Lelei still gapes at the sight of that much paper. A bird startles away from the window bars and soars off into the sky before Lelei can see what kind of bird it was. The Young Master, though, raises his eyebrow at the sight, and hones in on Lady Merces after. “Early for the Nasal to fly south.”

“I believe he’s headed back north, now,” Lady Merces says, folding the rest of the scroll. “Don’t worry, Gizel, he won’t be back for a while.”

The Young Master motions to Lelei to shut the door, which she does, then takes her post beside it. He remains in the center of the room, touching none of the furniture though he seems to be tallying it all in his head, the same way Lelei does. “I see you’ve worked your way around your accommodations.”

“I am nothing if not adaptive,” she says,

He glances over the improvised bookshelf, the creased rug against the wall. Lelei is put in mind of beasts in the ring at Stormfist, sizing up the half-dozen gladiators sent to make a show of his death. “Has my father spoken to you?”

“No. In fact, you’re the first person I’ve exchanged words with at all since I moved in.”

Lelei wills the blush out of her cheeks and the sweat off the back of her neck. It’s a lie. It’s a lie and Lady Merces’s smile betrays nothing.

And the Young Master, evidently, suspects nothing. “Which explains why you’re cavorting with the pigeons out your window.”

“They deserve to know where I am, Gizel.”

“They know where you are. You mean they deserve to know your side of the story.” The Young Master cocks his head, returns Lady Merces’s smile with one that seems nearly genuine. “And whatever else you care to share with them from here.”

“Of course.”

“I ought to have my father install glass on the far side of the bars.”

“Perhaps.”

“You don’t seem daunted by the prospect.”

“As I said, Gizel, I am nothing if not adaptive.”

Lelei backs one step closer to the door. The smile uncreases from the Young Master’s face, and he nears Lady Merces at the window, his tall boots almost soundless on the rug and his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

“Do you know why you’re still alive?” he asks her, soft and as clear as his orders and tallies in the hall.

Lady Merces smiles without considering. “Because Her Majesty wills it so, despite what you and your father would have.”

“Don’t presume that he and I are aligned,” the Young Master says, and that enunciation doesn’t leave his voice no matter how much darker the tone becomes. “I stand with her Majesty, but more because I want to see what you’ll do.”

“It’s unbecoming.”

“It’s not your place to say, and it never has been.” The Young Master turns on his heel and leaves her there, and for a moment Lelei is too stunned to hold the door open for him. “You’ve taken enough from me,” he says as he leaves. “It’s about time you learned what it means to bear your pain in silence.”

Though Lelei shuts the door behind her, it’s not loud enough to drown out Lady Merces’s cordial, “Thank you, Gizel.”

He doesn’t respond, and a few paces down the hall he orders Lelei, “Have her window glassed and screened from the outside.”

Lelei takes her paperwork back from the same guard she handed it to, and tries to write that down. Her hand shakes, and the ink smears, but the Young Master doesn’t notice.

***

The carpenters come as ordered, and install the window as ordered, and what breathable air there had been in this cell dissipates one breath at a time. Lady Merces ignores the din completely, pooled on her bed with yet another book. This one is a thick tome on newer paper than many of the others, with Harmonian script in clear black and blue ink and what Lelei can tell, language aside, is an impersonal, passionless scribe’s hand.

They work, and Lelei stands, and Lady Merces reads. An hour passes. The air grows thin, the room warmer by increments. Lady Merces stretches on the bed, turns over, props the book on the lap of her robes. Lelei pulls at the collar of her uniform. The carpenters leave, and Lelei makes to follow them out and lock the door behind her. It’s nearly noon.

“Guard,” Lady Merces says, and when Lelei turns to her, the book is forgotten in her lap and her eyes are on the glass. She’s too far away for it to reflect more than an amorphous gold shade, eyeless, lipless, on a wavering column of pinks and greens. “In the event of a fire, will I be evacuated?”

It’s the first real direct question she’s asked Lelei. She has a right to know. “Yes, my Lady.”

“It will be your responsibility.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“Are there guards who have the skill with magic to put the fires out?”

“Yes, my Lady.”

“How many?”

Lelei knows the answer. Lady Merces doesn’t have the right.

“I only ask because it is so far down to the water.” Lady Merces turns away from the window. The shade barely changes at all, just wavers in the haze of heat and new glass.

There is a precise number. Lelei only tells her, “Enough, my Lady.”

“Enough? Enough of talking, or enough guards with magical aptitude?” She laughs. “You knew what I meant.”

Lelei hangs her head. “Yes, my Lady.”

Lady Merces’s long robes shimmer as she slides off the bed, leaving the book open on the covers. Her feet are bare on the stone, then on the rug, and when she stands by Lelei’s side Lelei can’t help but notice how small she is, how frail. The flare of her green and gold bangs barely reaches Lelei’s shoulder. “When I was young, fire was a paramount concern, and escaping it nearly impossible. While I am thankful that stone and water do not burn, I do make it a priority to know that, in the event of a fire, I have a means of rapid and safe escape. I know that I am not permitted to have a map of this place. I wouldn’t ask you for that. But if there are guards that would be able to assist me, with their Water Runes and their knowledge of the layout, I’d appreciate their names, or at least the assurance of their service.”

There is nothing wrong with what she wants. If anything, Lord Godwin should have made those points clear from the outset, or another guard should be tasked with teaching the prisoners, if not escape, at least the order of protocol.

“I’ll try to find that for you, my Lady.”

“Wonderful,” she says, and her smile, gentle and grateful and all for Lelei, sends a chill down Lelei’s spine that explodes into heat where it strikes.

***

Lelei reads, in _Rune Warfare_ , for the hundredth time:

 _The perils of fire runes in pitched battle overlap with those of natural fire, but pose in addition several risks to balance their advantages. As with natural fire, damage from magical fire cannot be immediately contained, and that which cannot be contained cannot be controlled. In addition, water magic is duly effective against not only the presence of magic fire, but the damage it has caused to all affected troops. There are situations in which it is preferable to use magic, namely those where you as strategist wish fewer immediate fatalities on both sides, and less structural damage. While a concentrated attack with Fire and Rage runes can duplicate the effects, both advantageous and disadvantageous, of natural fire, isolated magical attacks can give the illusion of a natural fire and still serve to confuse and delay the enemy._

For the first time, she understands that this book is several decades out of date.

***

She gives Lady Merces the guards’ names and their basic physical descriptions. A copy of the list is on Lord Godwin’s desk as well, and most of the senior guards have been informed of the provision. But since Lady Merces asked for this personally, Lelei gives it to her as such.

She doesn’t expect that the first remark out of Lady Merces’s mouth, after _Thank you,_ would be “You have excellent handwriting. Who taught you?”

“A friend of the family,” Lelei says.

“Have you been to school?”

“Until I was twelve, my Lady.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Seventeen.”

The way Lady Merces laughs at that shouldn’t feel licentious, should it? “And how have you kept up with your penmanship since then?”

Answering her is becoming a great deal easier. “Not all of the soldiers here can take dictation, my Lady.”

She nods. “So you aspire to serve as adjutant to an officer? Or be an officer yourself, someday?”

Lelei doesn’t answer that, not because she oughtn’t, but because she doesn’t know.

But Lady Merces, aside from regarding her with an almost sideward glance, doesn’t press her. She leaves the list of fire guards on the desk, and almost flits to the bookcase, strokes her hand over their spines until she finds one, thin and blue and bound like a personal journal. “Have you read many books on war?”

Lelei tries not to stare at this book, even as it’s proffered to her, Lady Merces’s fingers like gold on the cover.

“Well, if you’re going to be an officer, it would befit you to know how war is conducted from an officer’s standpoint.” Lady Merces lifts the book gently toward Lelei’s chest, as if she’s coaxing a cat to smell her palm.

“My Lady--”

“I insist.” She laughs, but doesn’t force the book into Lelei’s hand. “It’s not a bribe. I do expect it back. But I’m not going anywhere. Please. Read it.”

It’s a book. It’s a book about war. It’s a book about war offered to her by an authority on the subject, without a request or cause, except that she thinks Lelei would benefit from reading it.

Lady Merces turns the cover over. The ideographs on the front curl out in raised gold, _The Science of the Amphibious Assault_.

Lelei’s thumb covers up the author’s name when she takes it.

***

It’s a book, it’s a book, it’s a book, it’s a book she hasn’t read. Lelei can barely keep her pulse down as she reads. The lines of ink swim, scatter like guppies in a stream. She swears it takes her three times as long to get through each page, not because the words are difficult but because they’re new, and it’s been so long since she read anything that wasn’t already emblazoned in her mind or printed in the dull, scoured press of a bulletin or a missive. Each panel is handwritten, each tactical illustration carved in licking strokes of half-faded black. This book is as well-loved as any of hers but it’s new to her, and that means almost as much as the words on the page.

The text is older than _Rune Warfare_ by at least half a century but not outdated at all. It gives dates from wars she half-remembers from school, quotes strategists she’s only heard of in passing anecdotes. The campaigns, the siege of Nirva and the Godwin conquest of Stormfist from the Aethelbald and five battles of the Fault War with Nagarea, leap off the page like cavalry over the fallen.

Lelei dreams of toy soldiers ringing her bed, mounted on brushstroke horses.

She’s several minutes late for mess that morning, but only Cius notices.

***

“Are you finished?” Lady Merces asks, when Lelei clears her breakfast tray away.

“Not yet, my Lady,” she answers without a second thought.

Lady Merces laughs and waves her away, _shoo, shoo._ “Take your time.”

***

The second night, when the words are less a storm of ink and crowns and water, she finishes her first read-through and starts the book again, slower this time. The principles of dual-front warfare are very different from the perspective of an officer than they are from a soldier. Lelei always knew how little she mattered in the grand scheme of a Lord’s ambitions, but the hierarchy makes itself even clearer in the preface: _while one horse can draw a cart that is meant to be pulled by two, for two horses it is half the work. But without a coachman and blinders and reigns, the horses will lose first their direction and then their shoes, and then the contents of the carriage._

 _Yea, as each company is one shoe upon the horse, and each soldier one nail, each soldier’s life is paramount, and so the strategist is responsible for it. But remember, the coachman’s objective is not to keep the horses, but to reach his destination, and yours, as strategist, is to accomplish your general’s goal with the same alacrity. In dual-front warfare, it is left to the strategist to decide whether to concentrate the forces separately, or converge them upon the same objective. Both types of scenarios follow, with both sets of consequences. Bear in mind also that the weather, the elements, and the political climate may also impede your progress, and that, in an amphibious assault, what is beneficial to the navy may be to the army’s detriment._

It seems so simple, in words and pictures, but questions unfold in the back of Lelei’s mind.

She has no spare paper of her own, but over the course of the week she claims some sheets left over from the prison accounts, and one of brushes too overused for Agate’s delicate work. No one misses it.

***

She hides _Amphibious Assault_ under Lady Merces’s breakfast tray, and her list of questions behind the front cover, with one corner peeking out like a mark.

“That will be all” doesn’t sound so final today.

***

She finds, tucked between the first two pages of _Ethical Considerations of the Island Liberation War and the Kooluk Dissolution_ , a note in winding, windswept hand, with characters that connect in faint brushstroke bridges like foreign cursive:

 _My Dear Guard,_

 _While this book will answer some of your queries, I thought to address one of your more pressing concerns personally, and so I write._

 _You ask, rightly, the question that every emergent strategist should ask. How does the strategist balance the humanity and inhumanity of her art? The answer is, in brief, “with much difficulty”. But at the core of my personal beliefs on the matter is the contractual agreement between the soldier and the strategic officer._

 _You are of course aware of the hierarchy. You cede so much to Lord Godwin as his soldier (as I did as his strategist, and yes, I broke our agreement). Among the things you gave him, when you enlisted, was the assurance that you would die in his service, in the event of a cause he believed righteous enough to stake your life and sufferance on. He, in return, gives you the means toward life: your pension, and your accommodations, and your direction. You, as a soldier, believe that the exchange is suitable._

 _The strategist must abide by the same terms as the commander of the army. I, as the strategist, comfort myself with the fact that the soldiers under my auspices abide by the same contract as I, and are therefore willing casualties. They consent to my manipulation, and they know that their service is as, as other authors have put it, the nails that bind the shoe to the horse. If they may speed me toward my objective, they and I have both fulfilled our terms of engagement._

 _This must all seem very academic and distant to you, like something out of another book. I can only assume that the real question you meant to ask me was how I sleep at night, and how my heart dares rest, knowing that I have betrayed my commander. That answer is not in this book, but I put it to you in writing nevertheless._

 _In short, I serve another. One contract takes precedence over all others, Falenan and Harmonian and all else I may ever serve, and that is my obligation to common decency. Lord Godwin made a decision that I could not, in good conscience, abide by, and so I betrayed him. A strategist does not have the luxury of altruism, but she does have a conscience, and I cannot serve a commander, or even a ruler, who would scorch the earth as soon as rule over it._

 _That is my limitation as a strategist. You may have your own, if you come into the art._

 _But first, read! And do convey to me your thoughts, by whatever means you feel most comfortable._

 _All blessings be upon you,_

 _Lucretia Merces_

Lelei forgets to begin the book until the next morning. By her hundredth time reading the letter, the corners of the page are worn so thin that she can feel the prints of her fingers through either side.

***

It rains all through the following week, and most of the week after. Like the flowers that share the colors of her robes, Lady Merces seems to wither without the sun. More than once, Lelei comes into the cell to find her staring past the planes of an open book, the words persisting heedless of their irrelevance to Lady Merces’ eyes. The oil lamps taper out in the humidity, and Lelei brings Lady Merces a Rune-lantern instead. Lady Merces forgets to turn it off at night.

In her quarters, Lelei reads, and reads, and reads. The paper and ink she steals from the offices continues to go unmarked, or at least unmarked until her withering brush finds it with question after question.

This time, she signs the list, _Lelei_ , with the characters for _law_ and _first child_. She hopes Lady Merces can pronounce them correctly. It would sound so musical, and look so delicate, on Lady Merces’s lips.

Lelei oughtn’t contemplate Lady Merces’s lips so salaciously.

Her right hand disagrees.

***

Her Highness the Princess Sialeeds, styled _Lady_ since her abdication, comes in to Agate Prison in the thickest of the storm and the flood, and wind roils about her. The ends of her hair drip on the stone, but her dress and the skin it bares are dry. Lelei has only seen the Princess from afar, at the Arena in Stormfist and in the streets, just-off the arm of the Young Master as they paraded behind Lord Godwin and the old Queen. No longer royal, the Princess’s hair is the color of bleached sand instead of the silver-white of the river in the Sun. It doesn’t make her look any less like she could flay Lelei alive as soon as touch her.

“Is this where you’re keeping Lucretia Merces?”

Lelei has a sudden, consuming understanding of what it means to be caught between a rock and a hard place. “Yes, Lady Sialeeds.”

The Princess reaches into the wide neck of her dress and produces the necessary documentation for a royal visit. “Good. I trust you can read?”

Lelei knows she shouldn’t feel insulted. _Too late now,_ she thinks. “Yes, Lady Sialeeds.”

“Good. So why don’t you read this while I go in and have a few words with her?” The Princess swats at Lelei with the paperwork, which forces Lelei to stand aside from Lady Merces’s door. “Make sure everything’s in order. And don’t come in, no matter what you hear. Have I made myself clear?”

She has, which must be why she doesn’t wait for an answer. Her fist slams into the door, just above the lock, and Lelei fumbles to take out her keys fast enough. The Princess crosses her arms and taps her foot on the floor, too fast to be a marching drum. Lelei’s fingers sweat around the keyring in one hand and the paperwork fisted in the other. She’ll leave prints.

“Is there something wrong, Lelei?” Lady Merces asks from within the cell.

She pronounced Lelei’s name correctly, and it does sound as musical as Lelei could only hope, like breath and birdsong and slow maple crystallizing on the front of a tree.

“No, My Lady.” Lelei manages to push the door open. “The Lady Sialeeds is here to see you.”

“Enter,” Lady Merces says, as if they required her permission.

Lelei stands aside, and the chains on the Princess’s gown swat her on the way past. “Let no one in,” the Princess, at plain volume, her words as crisp and hateful as the Young Master’s, “and don’t come in yourself, no matter what you hear. Got it?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, but Lelei tells her, “Yes, Lady Sialeeds,” all the same.

And she must stand there gawking for far too long, at Lady Merces placid behind her desk and the Princess livid just inside, because the Princess has to turn back and snap at her, “Then shut the damn door.”

Lelei tries to catch Lady Merces’s eyes before the door closes, and sees only that indomitable smile, that heat-warped bronze.

The stone of the door is cold as ice and magic against her back. She lifts the Princess’s paperwork to her face and reads. The Princess’s handwriting is barely legible, like a constant signature or an attempt at art.

Their voices don’t quite rise through the door, not at the volume they take. Lelei tries to drown them out and concentrate on the paperwork, on the Princess’s permissions and the assurance of Lady Merces’s lack of friends anywhere in the world, but as the minutes pass and the shadows stretch the Princess’s voice begins to cut past the stone. At first it’s only hateful slurs, the kind that Lelei would have drowned out anyway, _traitor, Godwin whore,_ true as they are--

“But we both know you’re not Godwin’s whore any more than you’re my sister’s,” the Princess rails, loud enough to set the stone at the back of Lelei’s head shivering in sympathy.

Lady Merces’s reply is unintelligible, but audible.

The Princess laughs, bitter and crackling. “Then again, you had to get your ease with killing children from somewhere. How many of his bastards’ lives have you cut short? Is it just something you have against bringing more Godwins into the world?”

Lady Merces takes more time to respond to that, and Lelei still can’t hear it clearly.

“What,” the Princess spits, “you’d have done differently if you knew? What if it wasn’t a daughter, huh? What if it was just another useless prince?”

“We can’t know that,” Lady Merces says, still even and calm, just louder.

“No, I don’t suppose we can.” It’s almost a sigh, but the Princess still seems to take up all the air around her, and even outside, Lelei can’t quite breathe. “And now this,” the Princess says. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Lucretia. How long before you march your Harmonian friends in and tell them, ‘that madwoman over there? That’s the queen. Go right ahead, just be careful not to get fried’--”

“That has never been my intention.”

“Like it wasn’t ever your intention to betray Lord Godwin.”

Lady Merces’s voice dips out of audibility again, and Lelei grits her teeth, trying not to strain to hear.

“You don’t play with intentions. Just lives,” the Princess says. There’s a sound of scraping, like a weapon being drawn. Lelei clasps the hilt of her sword and fights to keep it to that. The keys ring on her belt. The Princess’s voice dims to a whisper and Lelei shuts her eyes, forces herself not to listen in the dark.

She doesn’t move when Lady Merces gasps. She doesn’t move at the clatter of books to the carpet, or the scraping of wood against stone. She tells herself _it’s not my place, it’s never my place, this is why we should never talk to the prisoners,_ and all the words ring as hollow as a bell with no clapper.

Hateful moments pass, and the Princess is audible again, strangled breaths and staggered laughter and curses. Lelei remembers that the legs of the bed aren’t on the rug, that it’s still furled into a crease against the wall because no one can lift it. Cloth strains. Wood scratches stone, a steady familiar rhythm. That gentle, breathless whimper on the air is Lady Merces, stifled and spurred on the Princess’s fingers.

Lelei’s eyes flash open, and her breath leaves her like a wound in the gut.

She hears the Princess finish. The bed hits the wall twice more, and Lady Merces sighs, and Lelei knows the shapes of Lady Merces’s face well enough to picture it. The image sears her.

A slap rings out. The bed strains, and Lady Merces cries out.

This time, it’s the Princess whose words are unintelligible, but whose whisper cuts through stone.

Lelei barely manages to get away from the door before the Princess slams it open from the inside. She rushes past Lelei, her hair in disarray and sex redolent about her, and Lelei clutches the paperwork to her chest, almost in salute. The Princess doesn’t seem to notice, or care, and once she rounds the corner and takes her anger with her, she’s gone.

After that, Lelei wastes no time rushing to Lady Merces’s side. The bed is in a state, and Lady Merces is in a state on it, tangled in half-open robes and only one of her socks. Her hair is undone, barely longer than her shoulders and wild on the pillows. There are claw marks on her shoulders, on one bare breast, and the stark red-gold of a handprint on her jaw. Her legs are still spread, the hems of her robes just barely pooled between them.

She smiles up at Lelei, more dazed than composed.

Lelei’s heart leaps into her throat. “My Lady--”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Lelei,” she whispers. “I know what this must look like to you. I assure you, I gave my consent.”

Lelei is thankful that she’s not supposed to make any reply. It would come out either slurred, or incoherent, or both.

Lady Merces laughs, and reaches up to rest her hand on Lelei’s cheek. It does take effort, and her back arches up from the covers, and by the time her fingertips brush Lelei’s skin it’s already burning from beneath. “She has every cause to hate me. I don’t mind it. And if I can help her focus that hate elsewhere, it’s better for us both.”

 _Her hand is on my skin,_ Lelei thinks. _Her hand is on my skin, and she sweats like an ordinary woman. Her fingers are only just licked clean._

“She’s not my usual type, I admit,” Lady Merces goes on, with a sparkle to her eyes that makes Lelei’s heart, already swollen in her throat, thrum so fast it could explode and she’d feel no difference. “But Her Highness does have magnificent legs, don’t you think?”

Lelei has no idea how she manages to leave the cell. But she does, and she locks Lady Merces back in, and sends for the prison doctors just in case.

***

She doesn’t read or write, that night, though the book stays open. She can’t bring herself to touch the pages, not with the fingers of both hands streaked with her come.

***

“Any idea what the Lady Sialeeds was here for?” Cius asks, in the breakroom, over tea.

Lelei doesn’t answer.

***

The storm ends, eventually, but the sun doesn’t quite return. Clouds seem to cross it at every available juncture. The lanterns stay out. Lady Merces leaves Lelei book after book, but her answers get thinner and thinner as the weeks go on.

She must know what Lelei is thinking.

Then again, she makes her life out of knowing just what other people think.

“I can’t help but feel to blame,” Lady Merces says, one day as she only half-finishes her breakfast, no more adept with chopsticks than she was at the very first.

“Not even you can tell the sun when to rise,” Lelei says. It’s half a quote; the strategist Gilkan, who wrote _Preludes to War: the economic impetus for the Fall of Aethelbald_ , said something similar, about predicting the weather patterns but not daring to control it.

Lady Merces’s smile has changed. Lelei can no longer see that expression melted into bronze, preserved for generations. “Perhaps,” Lady Merces says, as much to her rice as to Lelei. “I am not a god. That is left to Her Majesty.”

Lelei glances down at the rice on the tray, at the books on the table, and knows that she might never be so bold to ask this again. “What passed between you, my Lady?”

“Between me and the Queen?” Lady Merces puts the chopsticks down. “Are you writing my book, Lelei?”

“Someday, perhaps,” Lelei admits, fighting past the blush on her cheeks and the traitorous throbbing of her heart. “But for now, I just want to know.”

Lady Merces doesn’t laugh. “Lord Godwin wanted the Sun Rune,” she says. “The only way to keep it from him was for her Majesty to bear it. But the earth still burned, and so I am here.”

Lelei moves the discarded chopsticks onto the tray, and lifts them to leave.

“Do you think less of me now?” Lady Merces asks, her voice setting the hairs on the back of Lelei’s neck to lift like hackles.

“No,” Lelei says, truthfully. “Not as a strategist.”

“But as a woman?”

The words, the correct, inescapable words, are _it is not my place to think of you as a woman._

Instead, Lelei says, “No, my Lady.”

***

Lord Godwin returns from the Senate on his rounds, no older nor younger than he was. He doesn’t notice the brushes missing from his office, nor the ink, nor the reams of discarded paper, now scribbled with questions and letters and aspirations.

“Have there been any more spies?” he asks Lelei.

“No, sir.”

“And no visitors to her cell but my son and the Princess?”

“No, sir.”

“Her window has been glassed, her correspondence otherwise cut off?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know of no one in the prison who is sympathetic to her circumstances?”

It takes every ounce of conscience, and every ounce of self that remains to Lelei for her to lie through her teeth to Lord Godwin. “None, sir.”

“Good,” he says. “But be on your guard. She can, and will, eat you alive.”

“Understood, sir,” she says.

***

“My Lady?”

It is another morning, dreary as the ones the week before. The lanterns have burned out, the glass of the window is white with humidity, and Lady Merces is still in bed. She takes up very little space in it, cocooned under the duvet all the way up to her chin, her face turned into the pillow and her hair fanned out like a sunburst. She seems the only color in this room that isn’t washed out in the dank, humid light.

And she doesn’t answer, so Lelei shuts the door and asks her again, “My Lady?”

“Is it morning, Lelei?” she asks, muffled by the cloth.

This, from the woman who has always greeted Lelei fully dressed, with that implacable smile. Lelei bites down a waver in her own voice and answers, “Yes, my Lady.”

The smile appears, or half of it, the rest hidden by cloth and hair and unsettling laughter. “Does it really matter, Lelei? If it’s morning, rather. The day will pass the same, won’t it?”

Lelei braces one hand on the bed’s tester. The unfortunately true answer is _Yes, my Lady,_ but Lelei finds herself unable to say it.

“Please,” Lady Merces says, curling in tighter on herself on the bed, smile fractured on her jaw. “Please, just say something. Ask me something. It’s been too long--”

Lelei knows that what Lord Godwin said is true: that Lady Lucretia Merces will eat her alive, if she hasn’t already; that this, like everything else Lady Merces has done since coming here, has been to manipulate Lelei to her side.

But Lelei is a soldier, and furthermore, a strategist, and Lelei consents to be moved.

Her hand slides down the tester of the bed, rests on the duvet covering Lady Merces’s body. She’s warm, underneath. She might be ill, not just crazed from the isolation and silence. It’s Lelei’s concern, now. It’s her place.

And it’s her place to attack. So she does.

She kisses Lady Merces’s forehead, above the strange smear of makeup between her eyes, beaded with sweat. She tastes like the same spices that dye her ink, like oil, like the scent of sex that Lelei hasn’t been able to drive from her mind. Lady Merces’s hand finds Lelei’s cheek again, guides her nearer, and their lips meet like brushstrokes, tentative at first as if to keep the ink from smearing and surer after when the strokes have run them dry. Her hair is as soft as her voice and Lelei curls a hand in it, runs it between her fingers as they kiss.

When Lelei’s feet leave the floor and her knees brace on the bed, legs interspersed with Lady Merces’s, it’s no surprise, no ruse. Even with the duvet between them, they align and rock so naturally. Lady Merces fits beneath her, securely, perfectly, more than any girl whose favors Lelei has ever enjoyed, and she clings to Lelei with twice the desperation that those virgin girls did. Lelei holds tighter than she’s ever dared, kisses harder, wrings her hands in Lady Merces’s hair with all the fervor she can afford to show.

“Come under,” Lady Merces says, breathless and bruised from kissing, and Lelei obeys without a word.

Lady Merces is naked beneath the duvet. The slashes and weals the Princess left on her have healed seamlessly. Lelei kisses every place they were, because she remembers, she’s licked every trace of that skin clean in her dreams and in the half-dreams that breach her when she reads. And she’s kissed lower, she’s taken her mouth down between Lady Merces’s legs in fantasy, but hasn’t known the taste until now. She turns her tongue up, and Lady Merces keens and takes her by the hair, to keep her pinned, keep her immersed in her taste. Lelei goes willingly, more willingly than she’ll ever admit, and when Lady Merces works a leg between Lelei’s to give her more pressure than her own right hand, Lelei cedes to it, and grinds against her.

The bed creaks to the same rhythm, but softer, with the two of them tangled on it. Lady Merces comes slowly and spreads deeper through it all, a peak and its plateau, and Lelei gives her her tongue, flickering outside her until she rides it out.

When Lady Merces undoes Lelei’s belt, the keys chime and the sword clatters, but there’s no one outside to hear. The fingers of one hand rest on Lelei’s tongue--the others slip into her uniform, into her underclothes, into her.

She rides Lady Merces’s hand as hard as she’s ever ridden her own, and after, she licks her fingers clean. Their tastes commingle on her tongue.

***

Lady Merces uncurls from the bed and rights the rug, still naked, while Lelei lifts the frame. Something about the scenario is utterly absurd, and Lelei presumes this is why Lady Merces is laughing. She’s breathtaking, unearthly, sprawled across the pattern, her foot tracing the bedpost after Lelei sets it back down.

“You’d think that’s all this was about,” Lelei says, still giddy, still half-dressed. Only after she says it does she realize that this is the first time she’s started the conversation.

Lady Merces marks it with a smile. “Well, I do appreciate your help.”

“Is there anything else you require of me?” Lelei asks, and it’s easy as breathing.

“Are you insinuating you’re mine to require?”

“Yes,” Lelei answers, closing her belt. “Yes, I am.”

***

“What are you reading?” Cius asks as he sets his tray down across from Lelei’s. It’s suppertime, but the sun is still just barely out, and the breakroom is awash in the last of its light, orange and bronze, setting the pewter trays to gold.

“The Senate records from after Lordlake,” Lelei explains. These, too, have gone missing from Lord Godwin’s office, but he won’t be back to re-appropriate them for at least another two months, and Lelei needs all the information she can get.

They both do: she, and Lady Merces.

Good thing Lelei reads fast.

“Oh,” Cius says as he sits down. “So what’s the deal with Lordlake, anyway?”

“Lord Rovere is dead, and his Steward has petitioned Her Majesty to let the area rebuild. The Queen isn’t permitting it.”

“That’s not like Her Majesty,” Cius says.

Lelei nods, agrees, and turns the page. “She’s not the same Queen who was merciful to the gladiators. Not to mention, you.”

Cius doesn’t laugh. He stares down the line of his chopsticks to the little shadow they cast over his bowl. “So what’s the Senate saying?”

Lelei smiles, and slides the bulletin across the table, turns it around for him to read.

***


End file.
